Rebalance the scales of justice in New York

Not lightly did Gov. Cuomo invite the brother of the late Kalief Browder to his State of the State address — and in the name of that young man lost, who killed himself after three years of needless jailing at Rikers Island, Cuomo now proposes an urgent package of criminal justice reforms.

Eliminating cash bail for some defendants, because poverty is not a crime.

Advertisement

Demanding that prosecutors deliver evidence to opposing attorneys well in advance of trials.

Stepping in to salvage or shut substandard jails, because no human should suffer beyond their due punishment dealt by law.

Fixing rules for discovery of evidence in criminal proceedings is the simplest and most morally necessary task. Too many men have been imprisoned for years on evidence that unraveled on reinspection — and a common thread in many of the cases of later exoneration is evidence held back in discovery until poor defendants' ill-equipped lawyers can do nothing with it.

To focus on one recently exposed by The News: Felipe Rodriguez spent 27 years behind bars after his lawyer failed to obtain a tape of a key prosecution witness contradicting his own account.

Rewrite the law: Require cops and prosecutors to share evidence with the accused, and share it as early as possible in the process.

On bail reform, Cuomo wisely steers away from the course chosen by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who all but abolished cash bail a year ago. Cuomo would allow bail for serious felonies and direct pretrial detention for defendants proven to be dangerous — while using alternatives, electronic monitoring and the like, to get lesser defendants to show up to trial.

New York City had made such strides in supervising lower-risk defendants at home that it just announced the closure of a Rikers Island jail.

It would be a mistake to see such supervised release as a panacea — the city already keeps the overwhelming majority of low-level, low-risk defendants out of jail — but just as much of an error not to attempt expansion of the kind Cuomo urges.

The state must rebalance out-of-whack scales of justice even as it helps local police and prosecutors drive crime, at historic lows, lower still.